You realize that the stimulus check comes with a cost right? You almost sound like government can just give arbitrary money to citizens but isn't willing to do so.
You can absolutely give money to citizens. The government is FOR and BY the citizens. If the citizens agree to shutdown, they can agree to provide a means to continue society through the shutdown.
The notion that we can't do this, is the one i have problems with because its absurd.
You can do this, but it has consequences. Money is not inherently valuable. It's a medium we use to store and exchange value inherent to scarce goods and services which people demand. To be a stable representation of value, money must also be scarce. This is a fundamental concept of economy, not something decided on and enforced by government.
The money a government gives to citizens must come from somewhere. They could liquidate assets owned by the government, borrow it from another government, take it from entities who are subject to the government's authority (taxes), or - what I assume you're getting at - just make more of it.
That last one isn't as simple as it sounds because it doesn't increase the cumulative value of the currency. Printing dollars is like dividing a pizza into more and more slices. It doesn't increase the amount of pizza. Inflation is a very real problem that has annihilated economies.
Funny how none of that ever comes up when we're discussing bailing out corporations. Quantitative easing by itself was several trillions of dollars arbitrarily invented, let alone the various bank and corporate bailouts over the past decade. And don't forget that we literally allow banks and such to print money and stocks on demand (aka leverage) to allow them to make money.
In any case, value fiat money is not a product of rarity, it is a statement of the value of future tax receipts. Money encodes/is an exchange marker for work done or promises of work to be done.
It does come up with regards to bailouts. There are tons of people who are opposed to corporate bailouts and who worry about inflation and a ton of problems created by the zero interest rate policy etc.
Less than 6% of the stimulus funds went to pay people, most of the money went into tax savings for banks and big companies (that clearly hadn't stopped eating avocado toast and starbucks coffee and hadn't salted away money for emergencies /s)
We could have done a blanket shutdown for 1 month, paid everybody to stay home and it would have cost multiple order magnitudes less than the current nightmare approach, that not only still impacted the economy, also caused 100's of thousands of dead people. This was a preventable catastrophe, caused because corporations are better represented and more important to our politicians than actual citizens. Thanks Citizen's United for legalizing blatant corruptions /s
The notion that we can't do this, is the one i have problems with because its absurd.